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Back to top.2. Women in Astronomy BlogspotFrom: womeninastronomy.blogspot.com

This week in the Women in Astronomy blog, guest blogger Hannah Fakhouri, a graduate student in astrophysics at UC Berkeley write about being a Graduate Student Mom and shares lessons she has learned; John Johnson, professor of Astronomy at Caltech writhe about his struggles with Imposter Syndrome, and Hannah Jang-Condell writes about a controversial letter of 'advice' to graduate students that has been making the social-media rounds this week.

- Graduate Student Mom by Hannah Fakhouri Greetings! My name is Hannah and I'm guest blogging this week about being a graduate student and a mom: I am a seventh year PhD student in (astro)physics and I have a three month old son. [...] I want to share with you a few lessons that I have learned in my journey thus far; they are things that I have always known, but now know much more fully...

- Imposter Syndrome by John Johnson I remember waking up in a cold sweat one night in early 2010, about six months after I joined the faculty at Caltech. I woke up to the terrifying realization that I didn't have a contingency plan for my family for when I would inevitably be either let go or denied tenure. Erin woke up wondering what was wrong with me and I told her that I was sorry, but it was only a matter of time before my colleagues discovered how little I know about astronomy. They were going to discover that they made a mistake in hiring me as a professor...

- On the detection of interstellar boron sulfide: a response, by Hannah Jang-Condell Many of you have probably seen this letter http://jjcharfman.tumblr.com/post/33151387354/a-motivational-correspondance making the rounds on Facebook, or even appearing on AstroBetter. While I can't verify the provenance of the letter, it's dismaying to see the pressure being put on the students in that astronomy department to buy into a workaholic culture. Not all the advice is bad, but there are some real stinkers in there.

So, here's my own letter of advice...

[There are also some interesting conversations about the original letter, and what kind of culture do we want? on the Astronomers Group on Facebook -- eds]

Back to top.3. From the TwitterverseFrom: AAS CSWA twitter feed, managed by Nancy Morrison

To achieve gender equality in science, shift men’s perceptions of what is professionally acceptable: http://bit.ly/UTCnni #ScienceCareers Retweeted by AAS CSWA

Back to top.4. More on Gender BiasFrom: Michele Montgomery [montgomery@physics.ucf.edu]

From the Cosmic Variance blog by Sean Carroll:

"Admitting that scientists demonstrate gender bias shouldn’t make us forget that other kinds of bias exist, or that people other than scientists exhibit them. In a couple of papers (one, two), Katherine Milkman, Modupe Akinola, and Dolly Chugh have investigated how faculty members responded to email requests from prospective students asking for a meeting. The names of the students were randomly shuffled, and chosen to give some implication that the students were male or female, and also whether they were Caucasian, Black, Hispanic, Indian, or Chinese.

And the inquiries most likely to receive positive responses were the ones that came from … white males! You should pause a minute to collect yourself after hearing this shocking news."

In case you missed the meeting (online or in person), I've gathered up the tweets from the Astronomical Society of Australia's 2012 Women in Astronomy Workshop ( http://asawomeninastronomy.org/meetings/wia2012 ). I think the meeting covered some really important topics for the community (not just in Australia, and not just women either).

Back to top.6. FabFems SpotlightFrom: National Girls Collaborative Project

The FabFems Spotlight is a new monthly feature highlighting inspiring women from the FabFems Role Model directory. There are over 100 FabFems profiles in the database and this number is growing. FabFems are enthusiastic about the science and technology work they do and want to inspire a future generation of FabFems. Visit FabFems to search profiles, connect with role models, and find resources on career pathways.